Something important is being said when the felling of a single tree makes national and international headlines. The loss of the landmark tree at Sycamore Gap that had stood for more than two hundred years, means that, for once the word âshockingâ is not an overstatement. That tree had been a trysting place, a walkersâ landmark, a place of solace, a photographerâs dream place, a silhouette of joy against a night sky.
Whatever the motives of those who cut it down, that sycamore was a symbol, its deep rootedness and familiar always-there presence, a focus for human hopes and longings, a safe place for people to sit. And before we dismiss those deep ties of human affection for trees, it might be wise to consider how much we need signs of permanence on our landscapes, and the healing power of natureâs recurring seasons of growth and rest, of harvest times and fruit.
The Bible speaks of trees that have leaves for the healing of the nations. Another text sings of freedom and the applause of Godâs creation when âthe trees of the field will clap their handsâ. And it was in the thick foliage of a sycamore tree that Zacchaeus was hiding when Jesus passed by and spotted him, and made a point of being a friend to someone most other people hated.
Trees are signs and places of blessing. They are important reminders that life isnât all about machines and technology, and life goals need more than more money or endless selfies to satisfy. Life needs roots, to enable us to bear the good fruit of our years. Trees are natureâs long term investments, visual aids of what happens when life flourishes. Thatâs why we should cherish them.
Photo: Two trees near Guite Castle, Aberdeenshire.
This book used to belong to Gordon S Wakefield. Gordon was one of a generation of Methodist scholars whose grasp of the history of Christian spirituality was broad and deep. I once spent a while with him over several days at a conference on Evangelical Spirituality, not long after his book on John Bunyan was published. We sat together a few times and talked about Evangelical spirituality and the comparative neglect of a large and influential tributary of the great river of Christian traditions. He was a lovely, gentle and sharp thinking man, and I'm so glad to own one of the books he owned and read.
But the book on Wesley is also important to me because I had read it while on a sabbatical break at St Deiniols Library, and was later delighted to find one second-hand. I'm reading it again as part of a larger study of affective theology, exploring the relations between Word and Spirit in the Christian's experience of divine initiative and activity, and human responsiveness in love and gratitude, in the inner renewal of the person before God.
What's fascinating in this book is the comparison of Puritan theology and piety and Wesleyan theology and spirituality. The Puritan influence on Wesley goes back to his mother Susannah. By the time he was editing his Christian Library he was ransacking many of the most popular Puritan works, editing and theologically re-shaping them, and making those chosen doctrinally curated texts available for the edification of those converted and continuing within the Methodist churches and societies. Wesley was expert in the art of precis and abridgement; he was also ruthless in excluding that which seemed to him doctrinally erroneous or practically unhelpful.
Monk's explanation of what Wesley was about is transparently honest: "A theologian's own allegiances — his interests and interpretations — serve to concentrate his attention on those elements of another man's writings which he considers important and to eliminate those aspects which he may consider erroneous or extraneous."
Wesley's theology was largely anti-Calvinist, whole-hearetedly embracing Arminian views of salvation, sanctification and election, and these often expressed polemically in sermons, letters, tracts and with particular polemical edge in Charles' hymns. The Puritans on the other hand were largely Calvinist in theology and considerably more restrictive in their understanding of the scope of salvation and the nature of the atonement.
John Wesley has been described as one whose spirituality reveals a 'devout eclecticism'; a less generous phrase may be to say Wesley was skilled at cherry-picking the best fruit from Christian theologians, ignoring or eliminating what did not meet his own Arminian leaning theological criteria. All of this is explored in Monk's book,which has done great service in explaining how the shelf life of many Calvinist Puritan works was extended, albeit by a method of theological cut-and-paste that would have scandalised the original authors.
My own interest in Wesley and the Puritans is quite specific. I'm currently engaged in a study of Richard Sibbes the Puritan, and looking for those places in the later traditions where Sibbes voice is heard, either as clearly articulated or as familiar echo. Reading some of Sibbes' writings on God's love, the mystery of grace, the intimacy of union with Christ, the work of the Spirit in justification and sanctification, it is hard to avoid the impression of similar sentiments and theological emphases in the verses of The Hymn Book for the People Called Methodists. We'll see, that's an evenue still to be explored.
Prayer of Intercession for Our World
Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be your name.
God of Wisdom, quite often these days, we donât know what to pray or how to begin to make sense of the way the world is.
If we used as our prayer list the news headlines, or our news feeds, or the rapid fire crises lighting up social media, it would take forever to pray for all that worries us, or moves us to compassion, or makes us angry.
Forgive us when we give up and when the messiness of our world so gets us down, that praying for the world is the last thing we think of.
Eternal God, yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory. In the radiating light of the risen Christ, help us to pray by standing on that rock solid confession, Your will be done.
Response: âYour will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.â
God of the nations, all over the world millions of people are on the move. Those seeking asylum from persecution and danger to life, refugees fleeing war and disasters of flood, earthquake, and drought. In seeking to offer help and refuge wherever it is needed, Your will be done
Response: âYour will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.â
Creator God, where your world is being wasted by stripped forests, polluted waters, destroyed habitats of people and creatures, the silencing of birdsong and depletion of our oceans, help us to find the know-how and the political will to change things back towards flourishing, justice and hopefulness. Your will be done.
Response: âYour will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.â
Generous God of Love, the cost of living crisis means so many things â hunger and no food, cold and not enough heating, loneliness and few friends, anxiety about how to make ends meet, fear for our childrenâs future and our own as we grow older. Lord persuade our hearts away from the possessive pronoun mine, and towards the shared pronoun our. Your will be done.
Response: âYour will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.â
God of all hope, as we pray for the world, its wealth and all its peoples, teach us to live wisely and generously. By your grace enable us to behave and act with determined faithfulness to follow Jesus; by your Spirit give us words and passions to pray prayers of defiant trust; fire our imagination to think up new things and perform here in our place, gestures of decisive hopefulness.
Response: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, for Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, forever, AMEN.
Five panels explore in colour and symbol the meaning of Shalom as expressed in 5 Psalms. (Psalm 1, 8, 104, 23, 121) The tapestry began by working the letters to make the word, and then each panel from the bottom up, one panel at a time over three months.
Over that time these Psalms were read, or listened to where music was available. The entire tapestry was worked and completed during a very difficult time when solace and inner re-orientation was sought in creativity and contemplative dwelling with familiar texts.
From the bottom, Psalm 121 is about hills, pilgrimage and therefore new horizons. There is a Scottish tint to some of the hills in the background while those nearer are more verdant, and one ready for harvest. Shalom is about that combination of moving forward and yet having a sense of wellbeing and stability.
Psalm 23 is perhaps the least successful of the panels. It echoes green pastures, still waters, the fruitfulness of creation which provides for the spread table and the sense of goodness and mercyâ the left rear field has harvest sheaves and on the horizon fruit trees. The dark valley (grey) and the path of righteousness (blue mix) which climbs to the top of the letter, are separated by a yellow shape which began to look like a chalice â so the wine pouring out seemed a good idea â the cup overflows. Shalom is richly suggested in every verse of Ps 23.
Psalm 104 is a celebration of the majesty and splendour of God and Creation as the expression of Godâs creative joy and unfathomable power. At the bottom of the middle panel are the bricks of the earthâs foundations (ancient cosmology viewed a three storey universe). The bricks hold the waters of the sea which are filled by rivers and streams from the snow-capped mountains. Calvin spoke of nature as the theatre of Godâs glory, and thus the red curtains open onto the world stage and the backlight is the ineffable and dazzling glory of God. Shalom is to look on the world through the eyes of a wise, generous, Creator whose power is both incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly for us.
Psalm 8 is a night Psalm and the combination of light and shadow, of stars against a night sky with a full moon, of water reflecting light and of the small human dwelling at the edge of mountains, forest and lake, all of these help to hear the question, âWhat are human beings that you care for us?â The trust that God does so care is an essential of shalom
Psalm 1 is the most structured of the panels, and the one which other people like most! My own favourite is the middle panel on psalm 104. The orderly stitching suggests the ordered life, focused on Torah, the words and Word of God. The trees and their fruitfulness against a blue sky point to a life that is settled, fruitful, ordered and guided by God. Obedience is love for God lived and enacted with gladness of spirit.
The panel is surrounded by rainbow colours, with Heaven above and Sheol beneath, but both surrounded and held by the rainbow mercy of God. This was the first tapestry for a long time in which I varied the stitches, and the first which I started without any clear idea where it was going or how it might look when finished. It is a study in colour, symbol and imagination of very familiar texts â I donât know whether its richness can be communicated and assimilated by others. For me it was the outworking of inner prayer at a troubled time.
My first serious encounter with the weird and the wonderful in the book of Daniel was in College in the mid 1970s. Our tutor was Dr Derek Murray, and we sat around the table with two commentaries, a multi-volume Bible dictionary and notepads. It was fascinating, and it was fun. The stories in the first few chapters seemed straightforward enough, like good old-fashioned Sunday School stories.
Until we started to do what would now be called applying an anti-imperial hermeneutic, and then dived into the theological fankles of apocalyptic and fantastical visions of cosmic turmoil. The whole semester we worked away at making sense of a form of literature laced with subversive power and shimmering with imagery designed to de-construct the political status quo. I loved it, and at times in various ministries preached on Daniel as a declarative and interrogative text.
No wonder one of the best books on Daniel is entitled Circle of Sovereignty, sub-titled Plotting Politics and the Book of Daniel. It is not possible to preach on Daniel and ignore the political realities of power, justice, freedom and the question of "what or to whom do we owe our ultimate allegiance?" The stories in chapters 1-6 are far from simple tales of wisdom and danger, or stories which merely show how to outwit tyrants. Likewise the visions of ferocious devouring beasts, the Ancient of Days, rams and goats, kings and kingdoms, and the end times, were written not as word puzzles or surreal dream stories.
They were each written to be understood. Every chapter is richly woven with imagery to be decoded by those who knew the reality of oppressive power, the fear of political powers let loose without apparent restraint. Daniel is just the book for times of political anxiety, with relevance to humanity facing multiple looming crises, speaking into the developing zeitgeist of cultural flux and the collision ideological enemies.
And so it is that this Sunday morning, I will be preaching at our local Parish Church here in Westhill, and the text they have given is Daniel chapter 2. Nebuchadnezzar has yet another nightmare and wakens with an aftertaste of anxiety and personal menace. He needs someone to interpret his dream, but like many of our most troubling anxiety dreams, he can't remember the details, but whatever it was it has spooked the most powerful man in the world. Into the second half of the chapter and Daniel tells him the dream and what it means.
What's going on in the head of the King of all kings? This image of a vast shimmering statue, Babylon's own Angel of the North, made of gold, silver, bronze and iron, and with feet of iron mixed with clay. And this enormous meteorite not cut out with human hands lands like a missile on the feet and shatters the whole structure. No wonder King Nebuchadnezzar was scared; no matter how impressive the gold head, if the clay feet are smashed the whole structure shatters. And there isn;t a thing the most powerful King of all kings can do.
What are we to make of such a story? Whatever it means, it's an ultimatum for tyrants. There is a sovereignty more ultimate than Nebuchadnezzar's decrees and whims; there is a power beyond that of military, economic and cultural imperialism. The faithfulness of the people of God is earthed in realities that create rocks out of mountains, shatter the platforms of power, and replace the structures of injustice with new ways of justice, new bridges of peace-making, and a kingdom built by One who is expert in the architecture of hope.
How to apply such wonders and stories to the current narrative of our world? Wars in several devastated regions; disasters of flood and earthquake, of fire and drought; economic uncertainties that threaten to undermine global stability, and are experienced locally as anxieties about energy security, cost of living crises, pressures of migration across much of our world. What is the relationship between the God we believe in and the world we live in? Is earth's future entirely in human hands, and dependent on human efforts and decisions? Has God relinquished responsibility for earth as God's created masterpiece, or is there more to be said?
Yes. More is to be said.
About another rock that moved by hands other than human hands.
The Kingdom for which we hope and pray, is brought about by God who moved the rock and raised Jesus from the dead;
God who moved the rock and shattered the feet of clay of all those power structures of judicial killing, inflicted suffering, systemic oppression, and dehumanising indifference to human worth;
God who moved the rock so that through the gate of glory that is the empty tomb walked the One to whom every knee shall bow, whose name is above every name, who taught all who follow him to pray and trust and believe that Gods name will be hallowed and his will done on earth as in heaven.
Why?
What does all that mean in practice? That part still has to be thought out. Enough for now to know that whatever all that text means in practice, those practices will, by the grace of God, be acts of determined faithfulness, prayers of defiant trust, and gestures of decisive hopefulness.
I'm currently re-reading Howard Marshall's slim commentary on 1 Peter. Amongst Howard's gifts as a writer was his common sense, and the always asked question, "Yes, but what does the text ask of us?" So, on hospitality, this gem:
"…an area where special tolerance of other people's faults is required — is hospitality."
The welcome of the Christian community involves 'special tolerance of other peoples faults'. Hospitality is to be generous in spirit as well as in kind, genuine gladness in the presence of this other person. Peter adds a further obligation, in 1 Peter 4.9 "without grumbling".
A lifetime's courtesy informed Howard's comment: "The arrival of guests can be inconvenient for many good reasons, and guests can be awkward people. Therefore Christians must give hospitality without grudging and without grumbling, whether secretly or openly."
Those who knew Howard know perfectly well that he lived that way, and whether in home or study, his smile of welcome was immediate.